ON SALE NOW

Conn Garrow, the Girl on the Moon, returns in a new adventure with more advanced tech, more dangerous aliens, and higher stakes than she’s ever faced. An adventure with narrow escapes, impossible rescues, harrowing spacewalks and splashdowns, multimillion dollar deals, marooned astronauts, and even some fistfighting. Girl on Mars is the sequel to Girl on the Moon, which Amazon reviewers called a realistic, intelligent barn-burner and a thoroughly enjoyable, imaginative, wild-ride of a story!

Today (November 14) is the forty-sixth anniversary of Mariner 9 achieving orbit around Mars, the first time a human-made object orbited another planet. Though a worldwide dust storm obscured the planet for a month, the probe eventually took 7,329 pictures and imaged over eighty percent of the surface.

More than sixty-seven years later, an expedition led by Conn Garrow became the first to land humans successfully on the surface of the Red Planet. To celebrate Mariner 9’s historic anniversary, you can read all about that expedition in Girl on Mars for only 99 cents in the Kindle Store, today only!

Some of my readers might consider this a better deal than they’re getting down here lately.

Last year, Russian scientist Igor Ashurbeyli announced the formation of Asgardia — a new virtual nation that will ultimately exist entirely in space. Since its debut, Asgardia has attracted over 300,000 registrants, created a constitution and, as of this Sunday, launched itself — all 0.5 TB of it — into space.

A small satellite called Asgardia-1 was loaded on board the Cygnus spacecraft and launched by the Orbital ATK Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Sunday morning. The satellite contains Asgardia’s constitution, its national symbols and personally selected data from each of the nation’s citizens. “Asgardia-1 may look like many other satellites orbiting Earth, but it is the only one in the whole world which represents a new territory,” Ashurbeyli said in a statement. “Asgardia-1 took all of the nation’s essence to space: its Constitution, its national symbols, and all of the Asgardian citizens – virtually.”

At the Kingdom’s website you can apply for citizenship, and even (once successful) nominate yourself for the virtual nation’s parliament. As I type there are 114,746 citizens of Asgardia, which the Kingdom says makes it the 174th most-populous human nation.

The executive secretary of the National Space Council, Scott Pace, has some interesting, even troubling, ideas about who owns commercial space vehicles.

“Heavy-lift rockets are strategic national assets, like aircraft carriers,” Pace said. “There are some people who have talked about buying heavy-lift as a service as opposed to owning and operating, in which case the government would, of course, have to continue to own the intellectual properties so it wasn’t hostage to any one contractor. One could imagine this but, in general, building a heavy-lift rocket is no more ‘commercial’ than building an aircraft carrier with private contractors would be.”

You don’t have to wade too far into the comments before someone hits on why heavy-lift rockets are not aircraft carriers: aircraft carriers are custom-built to the specifications of one “customer,” and there are no commercial applications for them. But that sets to the side the issue that Pace is arguing that the government either owns the “assets” or else must own the “intellectual properties” [sic] and, I don’t know, license it/them to private contractors under its essentially unilateral terms and conditions. It doesn’t work that way.

FREE to Read for Prime members

Earth has two moons.

It’s time we explored the other one.

Pauper has been added to Amazon’s Prime Reading program, which lets Prime members borrow and read books for free without having to sign up for Kindle Unlimited. (Pauper is also still free to borrow for KU members.) It’s a full-length, 336-page standalone novel, outside the Girl on the Moon universe, with no sequel or series planned. Go get it!

She’s all that stands in the way of war on the Moon.

They said Conn wasn’t qualified for astronaut training. To prove herself, all she’ll have to do is outwit alien races, escape from prison, run a huge business, survive assassination attempts, engineer impossible rescues — and walk on the moon.

Never tell Conn there’s something she can’t do.

Selected Short Fiction

The Rifleman | A bomb jockey fights World War III from his computer while fighting a tougher war within himself.

Upon Tyburn Tree | A chronicler of hangings in 18th-century London is inspired to do something about them. This story won third place out of 169 entries in the Libertarian Fiction Authors Association/Students For Liberty joint short fiction contest under the title, “A Masterpiece of the Literature of Liberty.”

Get Kidd to Bounty | In a space-western future, an ordinary female mechanic aids a fugitive pursued for being too deviant. From the anthology Defiant, She Advanced: Legends of Future Resistance, available in the Kindle Store.

The End | A mother’s death leaves her boy afraid to read to the end of stories.

Samples

Karren shared the pub that night with a party of three, there specifically to bitch about the Government, and a party of two, one of whom, Karren gathered, had lost her job that day. The now-unemployed woman and her companion were lending their full-throated accompaniment to the first party’s bitching about the Government during recent rounds. The woman must have worked for the Government, or for some outfit with a Government contract — oh, hell. It could be just about anything. She might have lost her job because of over-regulation. Karren could speak with some authority about over-regulation. She could also speak with authority about other ways the Government can make your life a little bit worse. Not that she would, in public.

“I lost my job today,” the woman said to the pub. Karren suppressed a self-congratulatory smile, and waited to find out why. “Gover’ment says my company has to pay me a certain amount, an’ health insurance. They can’t afford it no more. I tol’ ‘em, I’ll work for less, an’ no insurance, but they’re not allowed. So I get nothin’.” The party of three thought this was the worst thing they’d ever heard, to go by the expletives they let fly. Another toast to the shit-fucking goddamn Government. Karren took a more discreet pull, this time.

“How about you?” one of the party of three said. Karren flushed, hoping they weren’t talking to her — but of course, they were.

“Just having a beer,” she said.

“Just having a beer,” the man said. “What do you do for a living? May I ask?”

Karren sighed, but didn’t make a show of it. “AI horses,” she said. “Repair and maintenance.”

One of the other men in the party of three said, “Robot horses! Holy shit. You must be about the only one does that.”

“Around here,” she said.

“Get a lot of Government work?”

She breathed in and out. “No, hardly any. Mostly the other side of the law from them.”

“Other side. You talking about criminals? German Trotter and his thugs?”

“’S right,” she said. Was she slurring a little?

“Why them? I mean, why they like the robot horses?”

“It’s so they can shoot,” the unemployed woman’s companion chimed in. “Can’t shoot a gun from a sled, you’ll fall off.”

“Is that why?”

Karren thought better of answering, but then did anyway. “Might be part of it. Biggest reason is AI horses ain’t gotta be chipped.”

There was intake of breath from two of the party of three. “I hadn’t thought of that! Holy shit. That’s something. They use robot — sorry, AI horses because they can’t be tracked. I would never have thought of that.”

“So, you pretty much have a Government-proof business, don’t you?” his buddy said.

“I wish,” she said.

“Why do you say that?”

She had vowed not to get into this. Not out loud. But here it came. “Because they passed a new law. Just found out today. I gotta install a chip on every horse I service, starting in a week and a half.”

There was silence, for several beats. Then, a general commotion, punctuated with commiserating talk.

“That might make AI horses kind of less popular,” someone observed.

Karren snorted. She raised her nearly-empty bottle high in the air. “To the Government,” she said, resigned to toasting.

The others ignored her lack of adjectives, and chorused, “to the shit-fucking goddamn Government!”

“I knew James Morneau, Mattie.” Sniffle. “Or rather, I know his wife, Jennie. Three dear children, two without shoes to this day – only the littlest one has them, worn down from wear by her brothers…” She continued, but the bit about the children still not having shoes let me know Susan was in the midst of one of her… embellishments. Aye, at one time or another, maybe a year before, James Morneau must have had an unshod wee one, and no other way to shoe ‘m. But if “Jennie” and the Morneau family were such objects of her affection, Susan would have put shoes on those children by then, if no-one else would. She had the means, for that, anyway.

Mind you, to draw attention to Susan’s embellishments is not to disparage her – so long as one has learned to recognize them, and to avoid being misled by them, where was the harm?

“…So you see, I couldn’t bear to come see it. Oh, Jennie, poor Jennie, she needed so much love and support today, make no mistake, but she had all of her family there, every one. I would not have wanted to be in the way, as it were…”

Not on account of anything Susan was saying, I was aroused to anger – and not for the first time that day. Truth, embellished truth, or something in-between coming out of Susan’s mouth, James Morneau did have a family. He perpetrated his crime to put shoes on a boy’s feet.

“Ask him!” Susan reached across the table and struck me as close to the back of the head as she could manage. “Ask him!” she hissed, or as near to a hiss as you can get whilst saying ask him! She pointed at a tall, wobbly young man who had loped into the tavern, passed us, and was leaning against a wall, profile toward me, looking confused at Mme. Graveau.

I had not lived 34 years and been married without being able to reach back and tease out what a woman had said even when I hadn’t been listening. Susan averred that perhaps the loping man had been at Tyburn Square today, and would be able to testify to the fact of Jennie Morneau’s oldest children being present, and bare of foot.

Had I said something I was thinking, aloud? It was a tic afflicting me since meeting Susan. The alternative, that she could read my mind, was too frightening to consider.

“Susan, I’ve no doubt your friend” – she sputtered at that description. I seemed not to be meant to know they were acquainted. But I pressed on – “your friend, I’ve seen him before, with you, I don’t know what you’re getting excited about! Listen.” She had something leafy green in her teeth. “You and he both advocate for capital punishment reform, correct? Stop! Please. I’ve no doubt your friend would tell me James and Jennie Morneau’s boys were shoeless. I’m not naïve.”

Susan looked at me warily. “Naturally, Jennie Morneau would keep shoes off her boys, today, in the shadow of the gallows. She would want London to see, ehrm, the need, the noble motivation behind James’ crime. Right?” She had relaxed, noticeably.

“I am not suggesting poor Jennie would deceive for the sake of sympathy,” I continued more kindly, “just that, the Morneau boys being barefoot, today at Tyburn Square, would say nothing about the state of their feet on other days.”

I drained my cup, and with it mimed a to the King! at Susan’s friend, who then looked confused at me instead. I caught Mme. Graveau’s eye, and she came to collect my empty cup to re-fill it again.

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Random Reviews

Captivating to the end. The lead character is so real and so flawed, almost makes you feel like this what you would if you were in her position.

— Girl on the Moon

About the Author

Jack McDonald Burnett is an attorney living in the Atlanta metro area. His short fiction is available from this site. His nonfiction work has been published in a range of venues, from Economic Opportunity Report to American Builders Quarterly to Puck Daddy. His novels Girl on the Moon and Pauper are available in the Kindle Store. The sequel to Girl on the Moon,Girl on Mars, will be out soon.